Adventure Seven: Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down
Earl identifies the humanoids as super mutants and the creatures pulling the toboggans as “centaurs,” which are related to super mutants. He hears them speaking in simple English; the largest one, Sergeant Sarnt, refers to the other humanoids and centaurs as “Screama,” “Pretty Much,” and “Private First Class Good Dogs.” They are hunting for “popsicles” and clearly know that there are people caught in the avalanche. * Alder is buried in snow, and both she and Earl use Detect Nanotech to track each other. Earl helps Alder climb out of the snow, and they take cover behind the tree. * Ruth and P0P1 dig themselves away from the tree and out of the snow. Ruth’s power emits a glow and attracts the humanoids’ attention. * Vania has injured her head, and Jack tries to heal her but uses inflict light wounds and mangles her face. He repairs her with her healing salve. * Jack blinds one humanoid/centaur pair with glitterdust, sending the toboggan crashing into the wall he sheltered behind. The centaur bursts on impact, and the toboggan wrecks, sending the humanoid into the snow. * Sergeant Sarnt and his centaur, Corporal Cookie Princess, cut off the other pair, knocking the centaur off course and making the humanoid fall off the toboggan. Cookie Princess attacks with weaponized disease-ridden vomit. The humanoid attempts to attack P0P1 but is electrocuted by Ruth. P0P1 draws aggro from Cookie Princess and Sarnt, who takes P0P1 down. * Earl impales a centaur to death with a single blow and then reanimates one of the humanoids to attack the sergeant, nbd. * Or’ree sneak attacks the grappled sergeant, but Alder kills Cookie Princess and Sarnt rages, cleaving through Jack, Alder, and P0P1. Or’ree kills him and climbs inside his corpse for warmth. Ruth shocks P0P1 back from the brink of death, and Earl gets everyone back on their feet. Stan arrives in time to liquefy the remaining humanoid with his laser gatling gun. * Stan hides his panic at nearly sending us to our deaths and even lets Or’ree burrow into his fur for warmth. The speed at which Stan arrived means he must have been tailing us. He explains that he wanted to see if we could make the journey in order to prove our capabilities, but he didn’t expect the super mutants since they typically leave his territory alone. * Stan explains his antipathy toward the Seshayans as stemming from a centuries-long conflict with his species, the Weryn. In his experience, Seshayans were violent creatures without sentience. It’s unknown what, if anything, the Aklo did to the Earth Seshayans in contrast to the moon Seshayans to cause the difference in intelligence and behavior. The Earth Seshayans managed to drive the Weryn out of the South America Aklo preserve during the 1800s. * The Aklo somehow made their preserves and species undetectable to humans, which Stan refers to as being “out of phase.” This includes his hot springs base of operations. The effect also made the Weryn avoidant of human interaction, though Stan no longer feels the effect, which is why he used Aklo technology and started YETI radio. * Stan wants us for a job: retrieving Stan’s radio equipment from the Knights of Atomac. Stan knows that the Knights enslaved Earl and Alder, and that we know them as the Knights of Cascadia. Espousing Christianity, the Knights have found a way to mass-produce technology, but the tech stops working after a certain distance from “The Foundry.” They stopped using their radio-controlled explosive slave collars due to Freehaven raiding their slave caravans and taking the slaves out of radio range. With the Aklo technology, Stan estimates that their range extends across the continent. * Stan’s base can provide gravity assist to the Aklo spaceship, so we call Cavill to bring the ship to our location. We can see that the ship took damage from the super mutants, though they eventually gave up their attack.